ABSTRACT
Smith (1994) has recently used a structure of industry approach to discuss the organization of the macroeconometric model-building industry in Britain (government funded, but independent and separate models) and compares it (very briefly) with those of the US (mainly commercial) and France (centralized and nationalized). He makes a number of perceptive observations about the different arrangements (e.g. about their effect on incentives to innovate), and his suggestive comments provide a useful analytical starting point for our question: How does the structure of the model-building industry affect the interaction with policy users? However, in many respects, the structure of this industry does not fit the standard type assumed in the economics of the firm, in which there are clearly labelled producers, products and consumers linked via a market mechanism. Because it is not necessarily clear what the market is in this case; because the model builders and users may lie in closely adjacent or connected organizations; and because the input organizations co-operate to produce outputs-we make use of the network approach as developed in management theory (see, e.g., Miles and Snow, 1992). This approach may be more useful to illuminate and categorize the process of joint production, for network analysis looks at the structural arrangements of the parties to the value chain, the type of ownership involved and the methods by which exchange takes place.
